Tag Archives: Autism

Over three days in mid-April, leading thinkers from across the technology sector met at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California. The mood was urgent. The pace frantic. Conversations were ecstatic. At the end of the three-day process, technology executives emerged from their under-the-radar gathering carrying with them the models and metrics that may just prove to be a deciding factor in solving for Silicon Valley’s diversity problem.
Silicon Valley’s challenges in building diverse workforces are well-documented. In 2016, Deloitte reported that only 2% of the tech workforce is black, 3% Latino, and 24% female. Difficulties in recruiting and supporting talent from underrepresented backgrounds have been met with attitudes of blissful ignorance by corporate leaders to all-out panic among public relations executives.
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Note: A version of this piece was originally published at Thinking Person's Guide to Autism as a part of a series of post highlighting autism and accommodations during Autism Acceptance Month.
The statistics around autism and employment can be incredibly discouraging. Forty-two percent of autistic people in their twenties -- people like me -- are unemployed, even though only 26% of overall young disabled people are out of work. This might seem counter-intuitive. After all, if someone can do well in college or even graduate school, surely they should be able to do well once they join the workforce? Unfortunately, … Continue Reading ››

Four years ago, I was volunteering at the hydrocephalus center for a fairly famous hospital. I had been invited to sit in on an important meeting or procedure – I don’t actually remember which at this point. What I do remember is that I was going to be late. I remember the consuming sense of dread, rage and confusion increased with every passing minute I sat in my car. I couldn’t be late. I didn’t know how to be late. So I did the only thing that seemed sensible to me at the time: I turned the car around and went home. Then I didn’t speak … Continue Reading ››

Thanks to the success of Steve Silberman’s ‘Neurotribes,’ therapists and service providers have become aware of neurodiversity. On one hand, this is wonderful. A concept Autistic self-advocates have been celebrating for years has hit the mainstream. It seems that therapists and service providers are finally listening to autistic people speak. On the other hand, there seem to be many misunderstandings about what neurodiversity, and by extension allyship, entails. Therapy can only be enriched by neurodiversity, if therapists will let it.

A common misconception about neurodiversity is that we are pushing the idea that autism is not a disability. It's true that in general, neurodiversity advocates believe that autism is not a ‘disorder.’ You'd be hard pressed to find advocates who don't consider autism a disability, though. We know, through our lived experience, that autism is a disability. The world we live in was not built for us. Or at … Continue Reading ››

Recently, 4chan-flavored trolls invaded the #autchat hashtag. For the uninitiated, Autchat is a bi-weekly discussion group for Autistic people. Past topics have included friendship, autistic representation in media and strategies for coping with executive dysfunction. The community is usually warm, welcoming and a great place to learn. Instead, participants were told to commit suicide or drink bleach to ‘cure’ autism. The source of their ire? An Autchat regular and middle-aged mother of two described herself as ‘informally diagnosed.’
Autism self-diagnosis is a topic that can evoke strong feelings in many people. It isn’t unusual for adults to self-diagnose. It also isn’t unusual to get a lot of push back or even violent threats for self-diagnosis. Why does self-diagnosis make people so angry? More importantly, why do people self-diagnose in the first place? The hostility directed at self-diagnosis is, fundamentally, based in ignorance of what factors lead to its existence: Healthcare … Continue Reading ››